


Marked

by bellatemple



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bondage, Castiel's angel hoard, Dark, Evil Dean, Gen, Mark of Cain, Men of Letters Bunker, Season/Series 09, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 21:49:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1565246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellatemple/pseuds/bellatemple
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's really only one way that this story can end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Marked

Dean opened his eyes. 

He lay flat on his back, his arms stretched to the sides as he stared upwards. He was on edge -- _something happened_ \-- but he didn't know why. 

This was the library in the bunker. 

He was home. 

"Dean?" 

_Hot blood on his wrist._

_"I'm sorry, Sammy."_

A woman stood over him, so fucking tall, above his head. He was on the floor, where the table should be. 

He was home. There should've been tables, lamps, books. _Sam._ Instead, he was on the floor. The shelves above him were bare. And there was a woman he didn't know. 

He strained upwards, his body pressing against the straps that held him, crisscross his chest and circling his thighs, his ankles, his elbows, his wrists. His jaw. His neck stretched, and he tried to roll his shoulders, but there was barely enough slack to breathe. The strap around his head cupped his chin and ran up behind his ears to the floor behind him, gagging and immobilizing him at the same time. 

The woman looked up, somewhere Dean couldn't see. Which, admittedly, encompassed just about everywhere. She had long, dark hair, and wore jeans. When she wasn't looking at him, he mostly just saw her knees. 

"He's awake," she said. "Possibly lucid." 

Dean's arm throbbed, his muscles spasming. It felt -- short. Like someone had taken bits off at the end. His fingers clenched into an almost-fist, poised to grip, and he couldn't loosen them. 

He complained, half-whine, half-moan through tight teeth, and the woman looked down again. Her face was young, smooth, prone to smiling, but her eyes were cold. "Relax," she told him. "It's just the Mark." 

He jerked at the word, his body eager to leap up, to fight, though he still couldn't move. The Mark of Cain, _his_ Mark, seemed to flare in his peripheral vision. 

_Abaddon still smiled, even as her head rolled. Hot blood funnelled down the teeth of the First Blade, over his fingers and down his wrist._

_"Dean."_

_"I'm sorry, Sammy."_

He'd taken the Mark. He'd wielded the blade. He had become. 

Where was Sam? 

"We considered the dungeon," the woman said, "but that was built for lesser demons. We couldn't be sure it would hold you." 

He wasn't. It couldn't. He tried to protest, but he could only shiver. 

He had become Cain, the first of the condemned. He was more than demon, now. 

The woman tipped her head and looked up again, past Dean's feet. "He's crying." 

"That's to be expected," another voice said, and Dean strained harder against the straps holding him down. Castiel stepped out of the shadows near Dean's feet and walked around to Dean's right, dropping to a crouch by his head. "Thank you, Hannah. That will be all." 

"Of course," the woman said, and she stepped away to disappear somewhere further into the bunker. His home was full of strangers. Somehow, he knew, he was the strangest by far. 

"Do you remember?" Cas asked him, voice pitched low. Dean pressed his jaw into the strap holding it shut and scowled. 

"No," Cas said. "I suppose not. Or else the Mark has progressed too far." 

Dean heaved in a breath, as deep as he could, which wasn't very. Cas reached out, thumb barely grazing Dean's cheek, leaving a cold trail in its wake. 

"It hasn't completely transformed you," Cas said. "As far as I know, the thing Cain became shed no tears." 

Dean thought of Cain's dead lover and tried to shake his head. Cain cared. Too damn much. 

That was the terrible burden. To feel every ounce of joy and pain and anger and guilt, never able to turn it off or dull it. To not just live with the overwhelming vibrancy of every emotion, but to thrive on it. To feel it all anew with every swing of that damned donkey jaw. 

_Abaddon still smiled, even as her head rolled. Hot blood funnelled down the teeth of the First Blade, over his fingers and down his wrist._

_"Dean." Sam's hand on his shoulder. "It's over, man. Put the blade down."_

_"I'm sorry, Sammy."_

He understood now, what Death had been trying so hard to teach him. The sheer beauty of the end of a life. The astonishing fragility of every part of a human. The only constant, above Earth, above God, above _brothers_ \-- was the end. 

_Abaddon still smiled, even as her head rolled. Hot blood funnelled down the teeth of the First Blade, over his fingers and down his wrist._

_"Dean." Sam's hand on his shoulder. "It's over, man. Put the blade down."_

_"I'm sorry, Sammy. It was the only thing I couldn't give you."_

_". . . Dean?"_

Cas cupped his face with both hands. There was blood under the angels fingernails. In his hair. 

"I'm so sorry, Dean. We arrived too late to stop it." 

_"I'm sorry, Sammy. This was the only thing I couldn't give you."_

_"De --"_

_"I understand now."_

_Hot blood funnelled down the teeth of the First Blade, over his fingers and down his wrist._

Dean forced a sound through his tight lips, a hiss and a hum. A plea. His eyes burned and his temples were cold. 

"We'll bring him back," Cas said, wiping away Dean's tears again. "Just as soon as the Mark's taken care of. As soon --" Cas cut himself off with a sigh and lifted his hand, staring at his own fingers. "-- as soon as we can be sure you won't try to kill him again." 

He rose to his feet and nodded, eyes locked with Dean's. Dean twisted as hard as he could, snapping his body against the restraints and snarling through his teeth. Voices -- too many voices -- chanted in unison, an Enochian prayer. Dean's arm seemed to catch fire, and straps or no straps, he began to scream.

*

_The millennia had forged the First Blade hard as diamonds, sharper than the finest obsidian glass. It sliced through Abaddon's neck so quickly her hand remained clamped around Sam's for several seconds before her whole body spasmed and collapsed, shot through with electric blue eldritch fire. Dean shook her blood from the blade and stared at it, his chest heaving._

_"Dean."_

_Sam was still there. Of course. Sam was always there, in the end. This was what the devil had done to him: condemned him forever, trapped him in his own limited, crumbling skin._

_No. This was what Dean had done._

_Abaddon still smiled, even as her head rolled. She'd always known the punchline to this story._

_"Dean." Sam's hand on his shoulder. "It's over, man. Put the blade down."_

_"I'm sorry, Sammy." Dean looked up at his brother, and whatever Sam saw in him drove him back a step. "I didn't understand."_

_"Dean! Put the blade down!"_

_He wasn't fast enough. He'd always trusted Dean too much. They were each other's weak spot. Hot blood funnelled down the teeth of the First Blade, over his fingers and down his wrist._

_"This was the only thing I couldn't give you."_

_"De --"_

_He'd wanted to aim for the heart. Spare Sam the moments of terror and shock and pain as his bodily systems cascaded into collapse. That was always the worst part of death, the part they never seemed to avoid, but whatever vestiges remained of the stupid, selfish Dean shifted his arm, plunged the blade in under Sam's ribs, through the base of his lung, nicking his spine. Dean saw the light flare in his brother's eyes and he yanked Sam to him, his right hand still clutching the hilt of the Blade against Sam's torso, so he wouldn't have to see it fade._

_Sam would get into Heaven. Metatron wouldn't dare keep him out. He had too many good stories._

_"I understand now, Sammy." Dean barely noticed as the door to the warehouse burst open in a blast of holy light. "I love you." He let Sam's body slump to the ground and turned just in time to catch the first angel's blade on his own. He snarled._

_His bargain was complete. He let the fire of the Mark wash over and through him. It didn't matter what happened to him now._

_Sam was finally -- permanently -- safe._

*

"Dean."

He came awake with a sob. Strong hands pulled at his shoulders, gathering him up off the mattress -- memory foam, he was _home_ \-- and pressing him against a broad, solid chest. 

No holes. No blood. Cas was as good as his word. 

Goddamn him. 

"It's okay, Dean," Sam said. "It's okay. It wasn't you. It was the Mark. Like the demon blood, or Cas's souls from Purgatory. We get it, Dean. We understand. It wasn't _you_." 

Dean hung on, his breath heaving, because he was _Dean_ and this was _Sam_ and hanging on was what they did, but he shook his head into Sam's shoulder. "No. No." 

"Don't start that," Sam said, voice hard. "Don't you fucking dare, Dean. _This_ isn't on you. I'm not going to let you." 

Dean shoved back, then, breaking away from Sam's arms until he could see his own. The Mark was gone, lost in a much deeper, harder set of shiny, rigid scars, stretching from his elbow to his wrist, as though he'd suffered a full sleeve of third degree burns. "No," he said again. "I _understood._ " 

Sam stared at him, his lips curled down in a hard, confused frown. "Dean," he said, but cut off when Cas stepped up behind him. 

"He needs time," Cas said, tugging on his arm. "Come. Hannah's making coffee." 

Dean let them go, pressing his arms up around his head as he sat hunched in his bed. This was his home, that he'd found and formed with Sam. That he'd welcomed Cas into. His home, full of angel strangers and new wards that still pressed against Dean's ears like water at the depths of a lake. 

He had become Cain, and here, he and Sam were condemned. 

To live.


End file.
